Pitt offers conditional support for council name changes

The state Minister for Local Government says he is happy to support council name changes that have widespread community support.

Maranoa Regional Council has emerged as the preferred name for the new Roma Regional Council, with 72 per cent of respondents to a survey in favour of the change.

Warren Pitt says because the survey provided a breakdown across the five former council boundary areas, he can see there is widespread support.

"A sizeable proportion of the population wants a name change, but also each of the communities has a majority of people who want that name change as well," Mr Pitt said.

"It's much stronger in the smaller communities, but in Roma itself, more than 50 per cent of the people would like a name change to Maranoa."

Mr Pitt says he will not accept similar survey results asking for a change from Dalby Regional Council to Western Downs, because the survey did not collect information about the location of respondents.

Dalby Mayor Ray Brown says he is disappointed with the Minister's decision because council had not been told to obtain regional breakdowns.

"We approached his Government department and asked them what questions we should ask our people to run the survey," he said.

"They informed us of what questions to ask and we did exactly what they told us to do.

"I'm a little bit disappointed because we went to our people with the survey on a united voice."